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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

It's
true. Back in my younger, slightly thinner days I had the unlikely
job as a Santa Claus at Kaufmann's Department Store in downtown
Pittsburgh, PA. In 1990 I had left my career as a counselor to
delinquent teens and had been living on savings and the first few
dribbles of a freelance writing and art career. I needed a job. At
the time my friend Lori worked for Western Temporary Services
(full-time, in their office, not as a Temp). At that time Western was
one of the largest suppliers of Santa Claus “helpers” in the
area. She knew I needed cash and genuinely thought that my demeanor
would make me a good Santa Claus. She was right, on both counts.

So,
I attended Santa school to learn the intricacies of the profession.
Reindeer names, that year's biggest toy hits, how to speak with
children, how to deal with unruly kids and, in my experience, even
unrulier adults. I earned my Santa diploma and was ready to deploy.

I
went through this routine for six years. Western handed out various
assignments. We were needed at malls and private parties and various
stores. While I did a number of different assignments over the years,
due to my not having any kind of regular work schedule elsewhere I
was assigned primarily to Kaufmann's during the weekdays. There were
a couple of older guys who were longtime veterans of the Santa game
(Earl and Al... Merry Christmas if you're out there), who were also
Kaufmann's regulars.

Kaufmann's
provided our uniforms, one specifically for each of us so we didn't
have to use each others. They were cleaned for us every week. There
was a backroom where these were kept that served as a changing room.

Though
I have never been svelte, I was not really big enough to play Santa.
I had a special pillow I used for my belly. Even with it some adults
jokingly commented that Santa must have been on a diet that year. The
Kaufmann's setup was great. Unlike the malls where Santa is out and
on view at all times we had a small room with Santa's throne that was
enclosed. Kids would line up outside in Santa Land where there were
decorations and a TV playing kid's movies to keep them entertained
while they waited. There were times when the line got really long.
Schools would bring busloads in to see Santa. At other times,
weekdays early in the season primarily, when things were really
quiet.

Over the years I worked with a number of great photographers
and “Santa's Helpers” and though at the time we bonded over many
of our experiences I'm sad to say at the moment I don't remember a
single name (this was 20 years ago and I never saw any of them in any
other context... some of them never saw me out of uniform).

This was the daughter of the guy who ran the photography
studio. She worked with me every year. You would think I
would remember her name. I don't.

One of my Elves. She was there at least two years.

Another one of the photographers.

More elves.

This must have been 1993 since we're hyping
up my issue of Grey Legacy. The dark haired girl
was a friend of the photographer's daughter.

I
saw hundreds of people over the years, maybe thousands, and had my
picture taken with most of them. It's kind of weird to realize that
even now, all this time later, my picture is in family photo albums
all over southwestern Pennsylvania. Every Santa kind of looks alike,
but I would know myself from the eyes. If you had your picture taken
with Santa at Kaufmann's between 1990 and 1995 there's a pretty good
chance that's my lap you're sitting on.

In
1992 or '93 I received a phone call the night before the Pittsburgh
Christmas Parade. The Santa they used every year had come down with
the flu. They asked if I could fill in. So I drove down to the Civic
Arena early the next morning, changed in my car and boarded the
float. We trundled through downtown Pittsburgh and I waved at the
throngs of people that lined the street. The positive energy being
directed my way was amazing. At one point Pittsburgh sportscaster
John Fedko climbed onto the float and told me we were going on live
TV in two minutes. I had not been told to expect this. He asked me a
couple of questions that I honestly don't remember, then asked me for
a Holiday message to the world. No pressure, right? I riffed on the
usual Peace and Good Will idea and ended by asking everybody to be
kind to each other. Then Fedko thanked me, got off the float and we
moved on.

There
were days in the long year in between Santa gigs when all I could
remember was how uncomfortable the suit was, and to tell the truth as
December rolled around I would find myself dreading going back. But
the money was good... at least better than the other temp jobs I was
doing at the time. I would enter the store on my first day and ride
the narrow escalators up to Santa Land feeling a certain amount of
trepidation and wondering what was wrong with my life. Probably not
the best attitude for someone who was supposed to be bringing joy to
children. I'm happy to say that the feeling passed quickly and I got
into the spirit of things (though I admit to feeling some
post-traumatic stress nerves every time I went into Kaufmann's for
any reason for years afterward).

By
all accounts I was a great Santa. I was not the most bombastic Santa
ever. My Ho-Ho-Ho's were more of a deep belly laugh rather than a
loud (and frightening to some kids) exhortation. But I was kind to
the children and listened to whatever they had to say. In the long
run this approach allowed me to be more accessible and less
frightening. Many of the experiences blur together, of course. I saw
a lot of people. I'm happy to say that now my memories are mostly of
the positive things. I remember a couple of obnoxious parents, but
most of the kids were great. No one ever tried to pull off my beard.
No one peed on me. There are of course some people and moments that
stand out.

There
were a pair of sisters who had had their picture taken together with
Santa every year since they were babies. They were, I believe, 21 and
17 the first year I saw them. Their annual picture was with me for at
least five of the six years I was there. I hope they're still getting
their picture taken with Santa.

There
was a little girl from, I'm assuming, a fairly wealthy family. She
came in every year with her brand new leather jacket and boots that
probably cost more than I made the whole Christmas season.

There
was the woman who brought her newborn in for his first Christmas
picture with Santa. When I say newborn what I mean is, given the size
of this baby I'm pretty sure she gave birth in the elevator on the
way up. I literally held him in the palm of one hand.

There
was the little boy who was scared to death of Santa. His Mom brought
him back every evening for an entire week. I didn't see him the first
four nights. Another Santa was on duty. Apparently, the first night
he didn't make it across the threshold of Santa Land, but Mom was
kind and persistent and didn't push, and every night he got a little
bit closer. On the fifth night, the first time I saw him, he came
into Santa's sanctum. There was no one else around that night, so I
talked to him calmly and before we knew it I was sitting on the floor
playing with him with some of the toys we had there. I heard Mom say
to the photographer, “That's a different Santa tonight, isn't it?”
Before they left that night we had taken the most joyous and happy
picture of a kid on Santa's lap you could ever imagine. He's gotta be
close to twenty by now.

There
was an older woman who came in one night. I'm making an assumption
here, but I'm going to say she was mentally ill in some fashion. She came
in and talked to me about the problems of the world and how sad that
made her, and how thankful she was that Santa was there once a year
to make things better. As she spoke I came to realize that she
actually believed, at least in that moment, that Santa was real and
that I was him. She came back the next night to give me a handwritten
letter asking for all the things she believed the world needed from
Santa. She may not have been well, but her wish list for the world
was dead on.

Dozens
of scared kids, wringing their hands and twisting their Christmas
clothes. Dozens of excited kids, talking really fast and shaking. A
little girl who ran and jumped onto me, straddling my lap and facing
me while talking a mile a minute. I hope wherever she is now she has
found other moments in her life where she was as happy as she was
right then. Some brought me gifts: candy or drawings they had made.
Some were simply too shy to talk.

My
favorite anecdote of course is the one that involves my own
godchildren. They are eighteen and sixteen now, but at the time Gabby
was not quite three and Julian was ten months old. I had made plans
with their mother, Dar, for us all to go get dinner after my shift.
She brought them in right at the very end of the day. The idea was
they could see Santa and then I could go change and meet them after.
Dar brought Julian in and handed him to me. He was content. I think
he probably recognized my scent and he was certainly used to me
holding him at the time. Gabby, who has always been shy, got to the
threshold of the room and stopped cold. She didn't cry, but she
certainly wasn't coming any closer. I talked to her in my
non-threatening Santa voice, but I couldn't convince her to come in.
I can't do justice to her expression with words. She furrowed her
brow and scrunched up her lips and looked at me through a curtain of
blonde hair. Nothing could get her to move.

Eventually
we stopped trying. Neither Dar or I pressured her to do anything she
didn't want to do, and she certainly wanted no part of Santa. My
shift ended and Dar and the kids shopped around while I changed back
into my street clothes. When I came back out into the shopping area
Gabby saw me. Her eyes lit up. She yelled “Wayne!” and ran across
the floor to jump up into my arms.

“Guess
what?” she chimed, really, really excited.

“What?”
I asked.

“I
just saw Santa Claus!!!”

“Oh,
you did, did you?”

My
picture as Santa hung on their refrigerator every Christmas for years
and as children neither of them ever recognized me. As they got older
and their belief began to waver Dar took the picture down. She got it
out again last year, which was the first time I told them this
story.

This is the refrigerator pic, a little worse for wear.

Like
a lot of people as we get older my enthusiasm for Christmas has
waned. There's a lot of expectation for happiness that leads to
disappointment. We're all busy and the extra shopping and extra money
needed can be frustrating. I don't like the overblown
commercialization and commodification that comes with the whole
thing. The greed that leads to Black Friday style obnoxiousness
really gets me down.

But
then I remember my years as Santa. I remember the joy on all of those
faces. I remember the energy of the parade. For the kids, even though
they had their Christmas lists and wanted things, it wasn't about
greed. It was about being rewarded for being good. It was about
believing in magic, and for a few brief weeks every year for a few
years I embodied that magic. There is a shamanic tradition of wearing
a mask and a costume in order to embody the powers of the thing you
are emulating. While I was in the Santa suit I believed in Santa. I
believed in myself. I believed in magic and for a short time I
allowed other people to believe as well. It's the magic of giving,
not of things but of yourself and your love to friends and family.
It's the belief that in the darkest part of winter light and warmth
will come back into the world. We need to give the gift of light and
warmth to each other. Like I said to John Fedko as a Christmas
message to the world, “Be kind to each other.”

Thursday, December 13, 2012

This past Monday I was interviewed about comics for a local television newsmagazine called Ohio Valley Tonight. Host Nathan Marshall tracked me down through Phantom of the Attic Comics last Friday and asked if I could come in. It was short notice, but I had already scheduled a day off, so why not?I drove to Wellsburg, West Virginia to a great studio located in Brooke High school. We went through the interview about three times to establish different camera angles and to elaborate on some of the questions. Nathan and his team did a great job editing the footage and popping in some great graphics.The episode airs on Friday night, 12/14/12 on WTRF TV out of Wheeling, West Virginia.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

This
week I have found my faith in humanity restored a little. Not that
I'm ever the complete curmudgeon. I tend to be the optimist and
believe the best of people. I usually believe that most people, when
it comes right down to it, genuinely care about other, their friends,
family and community if not the rest of the world. But, there are
times when watching the news or reading news reports about the
horrible things that take place every day that it is difficult to
maintain that positive attitude. The recent political climate and the
mean-spirited discourse that defined it hasn't helped. This post
isn't about that at all, so I don't want this to become a political
rant. My leanings are pretty obvious to anyone who knows me. But
there was a polarization and overall nasty tone to the whole that
neither side is innocent of. I'm also kind of appalled by the general
level of snark that infuses much of what I see in people's personal
posts, on Facebook or message boards or comments sections or
whatever. The continual complaining gets tiresome when we live in a
world that our ancestors from not very long ago would consider
miraculous and filled with magic.

Anyway,
the first part of this story is part of the ugly side of things, and
there are no words to describe how sorry I am that this occurred.

Last
weekend an acquaintance of mine, Dave Whaley, was assaulted on the
Southside of Pittsburgh. I say acquaintance because while I've known
Dave for years I can't say I know him well. He works at a music store
I have frequented for a long time. He is a local musician I have seen
play over the years in various bands. He is very close friends with
people I am very close friends with. He is a fixture in the larger
Pittsburgh community I consider myself to be a part of. Dave is one
of the quietest and nicest people you will ever meet.

I
saw him last Saturday night. I was out with a group of friends at a
restaurant/bar. The place featured Karaoke, and while that's not why
we chose this place we had a lot of fun. Dave wasn't part of our
group, but he had stopped by our table to say “Hi.” While we were
putting on our coats and getting ready to leave someone was
performing Fairies Wear Boots by Black Sabbath and I was
amused to see that Dave and I were the only people in the audience
who were singing along (quietly and to ourselves, of course).

About
a half an hour later Dave was assaulted on his walk home.

From
what I gather a car flew through a red light and came very close to
hitting him. Dave yelled for the driver to slow down. I have a tough
time imagining Dave even yelling at someone, so I doubt it was much
more heated than that. The driver stopped, got out and cold cocked
Dave in the face, knocking him unconscious and breaking his orbital
bone in a couple of places.

There
is not a very good description of the assailant, so unfortunately it
seems the chances of catching him are remote.

Dave
was hospitalized and had surgery on Tuesday. He's home now and by all
accounts is doing well. As a musician and someone who works at a
small independently owned business he does not have insurance. In
addition to the pain and physical and emotional trauma this experience
could lead to financial ruin. One punch by a drunken, rage-filled
moron could destroy a man's life.

And
here's where my faith comes back...

The
outpouring of support from Dave's friends and the wider community has
been phenomenal. A Dave Whaley Support page was set up on Facebook.
There is a website called Youcaring.com that's like a Kickstarter for
healthcare. In a little over 24 hours the site had collected $8000 to help pay Dave's medical expenses (and as of this posting
there is still time to donate... go to Dave's page at http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/Dave-Whaley-Medical-Fund/26029). This money
is all from private donations from people who care about Dave.

But
that's not all. There are at least five local events planned as
fundraisers. Local bands donating their time to help one of their
own. I heard there was a tattoo/piercing shop that would donate the
entire cost of a piercing if the customer mentioned Dave. A
restaurant gave 15% of your bill to the fund if you mentioned Dave.
T-shirts supporting him are being sold and the printing
cost of them was donated.

Many Southside bars, restaurants and other
establishments have banded together to raise awareness of violence
and crime in their neighborhood in response to this incident because
they realize this effects them all. Dave is going to need ongoing
post-surgery vision rehabilitation, and someone found a specialist
willing to donate the service for free, sort of a medical version of
pro bono work.

While
I am pained that this incident had to happen I am so proud of my
community, my friends and my city. This is what it means to take care
of each other. When it's someone you know and care about it's easy to
justify helping to pay for their healthcare. It's easy to see how a
single moment in someone's life can destroy them financially. It's a real person with real value and not an anonymous statistic. This is
not about politics, it's about being decent human beings. It's about
recognizing this could happen to anyone and any of us could find
ourselves in a similar situation in a heartbeat. One minute you're
singing a Black Sabbath tune and the next you're unconscious on the
sidewalk.

Why
can't we be this caring and supportive of everyone?

Other
than Dave there were two kinds of people involved in this incident.
One was a rage-fueled asshole who didn't care about anything other
than his own hurt feelings and self-importance. The other kind is the
multitude of people who showed they genuinely care about the
well-being of another human being. We need to extrapolate this
personal connection to a specific person to the world at large.

Who
do you want to be... A rage-filled asshole or someone who understands
we're all in this together?

I first started reading scratch because of the free, relatively lengthy sample that was given and almost immediately found myself sucked into the believable, yet slightly mystical world that Wayne Wise had crafted. I was hooked, and at the extremely affordable price, dove right in.

There is nothing not to like about this novel. There's great characterization, plot progression, the pacing feels consistent and doesn't drag, and the story ends just as one expects it to given how it unfolds before the conclusion. By far, what stood out most to me were the characters. You'll almost immediately revile Billy, laugh with the adorable Michaela (Mike), empathize with Adam's personal journey of discovery, shake your head at Shelly's pettiness, admire the charming Jack, respect Caroline's wit, and so much more. You may even find yourself liking minor characters like Joe and Elmer.

The journey that Wayne Wise takes you in surprisingly packs quite an emotional punch, and I was not expecting this given the sample. While there is a "supernatural thriller" aspect to this story, it is the human characters and their interactions that make this book so compelling. They run the gamut of emotions such as: fear, selfless love, heartfelt anger, deep-seated bitterness, duty, regret, and the like. This makes them both personable and relatable. It feels like you're right alongside with them as their paths intersect with one another's in both predictable and not quite so predictable ways.

Mr. Wise's personal knowledge, love, and respect for the areas visited shine through with descriptions that make you want to visit the Record Cavern on Craig Street or the beautiful mountains of Canaan itself.

Take the plunge. You can read this wonderfully written work that's the right combination of heart, child-like awe, humor, and mysticism, just to name a few ingredients. PARENTAL ADVISORY : For the parents out there, I'd say this one is for young adults and older as there is a bit of profanity, some sexual content, some violent situations, and potentially scary supernatural portions. That being said, none of the above feel forced or excessive and only make the emotional impact that much more compelling. Treat yourself to this underpriced gem. You won't be disappointed.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Do
you ever get stupidly obsessed with something for no apparent reason?
It could be anything, and suddenly you just can't get enough of it?
Then you feel the need to share and talk about your obsession with
everyone you know (like I'm about to do in this blog post)? It
happens to me every once in awhile. Sometimes it's because I've
discovered something new and want to know everything I can about it.
As bizarre as it may sound to some people I love to research the
things I get obsessed with. Some of that is my lifelong love of
history, some of it is just wanting to know where things come from. I
did it with Arthurian fiction, mythology, and any one of a number of
other topics that have captured my interest over the years. I get
into a new band and start discovering their precedents and
influences. I go back farther and farther and discover a lot of great
music along the way. The same is true of the comics I'm into. Both of
these hobbies are life-long obsessions for me, but I'm still finding
connections I didn't know existed.

And
then sometimes it's a renewed obsession with something I've been into
for a long time. Something reignites my interest and I'm off for a
couple of weeks reading and/or listening to everything I can. It
happened last year with David Bowie when I read the Starman
biography. It happened recently with Love and Rockets (the
comic... I swear I'll write those blogs someday), and I have spent a
lot of time lately rereading them.

You
probably know them from their songs Little Willy, Ballroom
Blitz, Fox on the Run, and Love is Like Oxygen.
Chances are those are the only songs by The Sweet you've heard unless
you're a fan. It started when I listened to a collection of live
tracks and studio outtakes on Spotify recently. Even though I've
listened to them off and on for years and have read about them and
watched some documentaries and YouTube videos (see... not really a
casual fan before all this), something about this collection set off
my obsessive tendencies. I've been tracking down obscure and
out-of-print music, rewatching the documentaries, searching the
internet... the whole bit. I discovered there was a biography of the
band called Blockbuster: The True Story of The Sweet and
luckily my local library had a copy in stock (Yay for the Carnegie
Library of Pittsburgh!). There is a long out-of-print autobiography
by bassist Steve Priest called Are You Ready, Steve? that I
would love to read. Anyone have $900 for the Buy-It-Now copy I saw on
Ebay?

The
Sweet had a strange and varied career. They went through several
changes in style and public perception, from Bubblegum to Pop Rock to
Hard Rock to Prog Rock (though the categories are debatable, I'm
sure). In the beginning they seemed to be little more than a
teenybopper Bubblegum Pop band, and they were very successful at it.
As much as we music fans tend to think of the early 70's as the time
of the birth of bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and many
others of this ilk, the truth is, in Great Britain at least, and to a
large extent here in the US, the top 40 was full of Bubblegum Pop.
Sugar Sugar by The Archies, an overtly made-up band based on
the comic book characters, was the top-selling #1 song of 1969. There
was a lot of money to be made with Bubblegum and a lot of people were
making it. Two of the most successful purveyors of Bubblegum were the
British songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. For several
years they churned out one top 10 song after another for a variety of
bands, The Sweet among them.

On a lot of these early singles, though
the vocals and harmonies were by the four members of the band, most
of the music was performed by studio session musicians. This was a
fairly common practice then, and The Sweet weren't the only
successful band this happened to. Unlike many others, The Sweet were
actually fairly accomplished musicians and constantly pushed to be
allowed to record on their own records. They were allowed to do so on
most of their b-sides. One of the qualities that set Sweet apart from
many of their contemporaries was the strength of their incredible
vocal four-part harmonies. Queen is known for the same, and are
probably the undisputed champions. None of the members of Sweet could
match Freddie Mercury's sheer range and versatility. But, as a
distinct band sound, The Sweet were doing this for quite some time
before Queen's first album hit the shelves.

They
quickly jumped onto the fashion and make-up that was to become the
signature of Glam Rock. It started with simple stage make-up and
clothing and quickly escalated from there. Whereas T.Rex's Marc
Bolan's experiments with glitter and feather boas was seen as just
part of who he was, and David Bowie's stage personas were crafted
with a more calculating eye, The Sweet were, to use the British
vernacular, just taking the piss out of people. Through their sense
of humor they took the image to extremes, usually pre-dating and
influencing everyone else in the scene. But every time they took the look
up a notch more people noticed and they became more famous. They
tapped into the androgyny and repressed sexuality of the scene and
played it to the hilt. Though straight they embraced a lot of cliché
gay imagery and mannerisms.

Benny Hill and Monty Python could dress
up like old tarts and it was funny. The Sweet, and the rest of the
movement, were threatening to the middle class, in terms of image if
not the music they were producing at the time. Bassist Steve Priest
in particular went out of his way to stir things up, from wearing hot
pants on Top of the Pops (a good six months before Bowie did the same
thing to public outcry), to appearing on a Christmas special dressed
as a gay stormtrooper, replete with WWI spiked German helmet,
lipstick, rouge, and a little Hitler mustache.

I can't find a single still image of this on the internet.

Priest once described The
Sweet's approach to all of this as “more camp than a row of tents”.

Though
they wanted to be taken seriously as a Rock band, their reputation as
Bubblegum teenybopper fodder kept critics and a more mature audience
from taking them seriously. The other problem was that the singles
were making them ridiculously wealthy. It was difficult to turn your
back on another Chinn-Chapman composition that was going to go into
the top 10. They did eventually begin to move past this impasse,
primarily by being allowed to play on their records, and on the
strength of their live performances.

Living
in the States I didn't know any of this. The Glam movement never
really took hold here in the same way as it did elsewhere, and I'm
just young enough to have missed it anyway. I was catching the
tail-end of it with Elton John's costuming and a couple of Bowie
singles. I was into Alice Cooper and jumped on the KISS bus as soon
as I saw them, but they were both darker, less androgynous versions
of Glam. I'm pretty sure if I had seen pictures of the Sweet in full
regalia I would have been interested, but by the time I was reading
the actual Rock magazines the Sweet weren't being covered a whole
lot, and when they were their image had moved on. I bought the
singles of Ballroom Blitz (another Chinn-Chapman tune), and
Fox on the Run (the first single written and produced by the
band, and their biggest hit in the US), and really loved both songs.
I remember looking at their Desolation Boulevard album in
record stores based on the strength of the singles, but for some
reason I never picked it up. There was probably a new KISS album I
needed to buy on my limited budget.

Sometime
in 1976 or '77 I joined the Columbia House record club. You sent in a
penny and got 10 or 12 albums, then were obligated to buy several
more at full price over the next three years. I don't specifically
remember most of the records I purchased through this service, but I
did choose Give Us a Wink by The Sweet as part of my original
purchase. Having never heard the British term wank before I
didn't get any of the sexual innuendo (though the less-than-subtle
line “up to my balls inside her” in the song Yesterday's Rain
certainly, ahem, pricked up my ears).

On the original album the eye on the left was a die-cut hole in
the album sleeve. An inner sleeve had several different images
of an eye, from wide open to closed. When you slid the inner
sleeve out the cover appeared to wink at you. You don't get
that with CD's and mp3's.

Based on the singles I had
heard this was not the album I expected. I now know this was the
first album the band wrote and performed entirely on their own, and
they were going full-on hard rock. Whatever my expectations, I grew
to really love this album, and it remains in my personal echelon of
favorite records from my teen years.

But,
much to the band's dismay, the album really didn't replicate the
sales success of earlier efforts. They were a band that seemed
plagued by bad luck and bad timing. At every turn it seemed, just as
they were poised to take that next step, something set them back.
Some of their problems were of their own making, of course, but
others were just ridiculous. BBC Radio went on strike just when they
released a single, so it went nowhere. BBC thought the phrase “for
God's sake” in the single Turn It Down was blasphemous and
refused to play it (oh, how times have changed). They were invited to
open for The Who by Pete Townsend, who was a big fan of theirs
apparently. This would probably have been the biggest show at this
point of their career. But singer Brian Connelly was involved in an
assault and got kicked in the throat, making him unable to sing for
months (and by all accounts he never recovered full use of his
voice). They had to back out of the show.

There
was one last surge of popularity. The song Love is Like Oxygen
hit the charts in America in the late 70's. Like their entire career,
they were counted out, but then managed to squeeze out another
success. But that was pretty much the end. By this time the ravages
of alcohol abuse had taken their toll on Connelly and he left the
band. The other three continued on for three more albums that no one
bought (as a fan I didn't even know they existed until I read the
biography). There was an attempt at a reunion in the late 80's but
Connelly's health prevented it from going forward.

Connelly
died in 1997 from a series of heart attacks, drummer Mick Tucker in
2002 from leukemia. At present Steve Priest maintains a version of the band in America with all new members. Guitarist Andy Scott does
the same thing in England and Europe. Both bands tour and perform the
classic songs. Scott's band has released a couple of albums of new
material that sounds remarkably like the original band.

So
why this obsession on my part right now? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just
feeling nostalgic, though in truth I really didn't experience much of
their career first hand. I didn't even hear the vast majority of
their songs until they were rereleased on CD in the 90's. But, thanks
to a couple of singles and one album they are a band that is linked
to my youth. I can't see the makeup and costumes and stage
spectaculars of a lot of modern artists without thinking of what came
before (and I'm old enough to realize that fans of Liberace probably
felt that way about The Sweet, at least in terms of fashion). Part of
it is simply that it's fun. It's over the top and slightly ridiculous
and just when it needs to it really rocks and most people don't know
anything about it.

I'll
leave you with a video of Ballroom Blitz. This song probably
sums up The Sweet better than any other single song. It's a Chinn and
Chapman top single. It has great Connelly vocals, driving Mick Tucker
drums, some great rock guitar from Andy, and the requisite amount of
Steve Priest camping it up. Enjoy. It's a lot of fun.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

So,
I decided I needed to reread all of Gilbert Hernandez Love and
Rockets Palomar stories before continuing my ongoing Favorite Comics
posts. That's taking a little time, though the experience has been
rewarding and worth it. But, in the meantime, I wanted to write about
something else.

So
I decided to write about Love and Rockets. The band this time, not
the comic.

Well,
sort of.

This
past Sunday night I went to see David J perform at the Thunderbird
Cafe, a little bar about a two-minute walk from my apartment. David J
was the bass player for Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, as well as
having an ongoing solo career, plus having played in some other
random bands over the years. It was a really great show, featuring
music from his entire career. I was a pretty big fan of most of this
music at one time or another, so there were a lot of great moments
for me last night.

But
the main thing I want to talk about here are the random connections
between people and events as we spiral around this planet of several
billion people over time. During his performance, as he sang songs
from his thirty-plus years in the industry, my mind started recalling
all of the various connections I have with David J, though we had
never met until last night.

This
is rambling and out of any kind of chronological order, and probably
of no interest to anyone but me, but I find these sorts of things
fascinating. Bear with me.

I
discovered Bauhaus late. They originally existed as a band from 1978
to 1983 when I was living in a place with no access to music that
was, at that time, fairly obscure. I have since seen video of their
live performances from the time, and I'm pretty sure, given my
penchant for costumes and theater, that if I had seen them in 1979 I
would have gotten into them. As it was it was 1986 before I
discovered them when I moved into a college apartment with five other
guys. One of them, Steve, had an amazing collection of vinyl records,
most of which were alternative bands I had never heard of. To say his
record collection changed my musical life is an understatement. That
fall, 1986, Love and Rockets second album Express was
relatively new and spent a lot of time on the turntable at the
apartment. I got really into L&R. It took awhile to associate
them with Bauhaus in my mind. I found Bauhaus to be more challenging
for me, and it took longer to get into. At the same time I got really
turned onto a band called The Jazz Butcher. David J had played bass
on two of his albums between his time in Bauhaus and Love and
Rockets.

About
a year later (November 9, 1987 to be precise... thank you internet
search engines), still at Edinboro University of PA, we discovered
that Love and Rockets were playing at Indiana University of PA. It
was one of those spur-of-the-moment road trips where a friend
borrowed his father's van and 10 or 12 of us piled into it for a road
trip. L&R were touring for their third album, Earth, Sun,
Moon. We got to the Fisher Auditorium and for five bucks, if
memory serves, saw not only L&R but another band none of us had
ever heard of prior to that evening, Jane's Addiction.

Lookie what I found on the internet!

Two
years after that on August 31, 1989 I saw L&R at the Syria Mosque
in Pittsburgh. The Pixies, who I had just discovered, opened. Say
what you will about L&R, but they could pick great opening bands.
The Pixies completely blew me away.

Then,
twenty-three years later, I met David J at a bar near my house. We've
been pinging around on this planet together for years. This was the
same person I had seen on stage all those years ago and our
individual trajectories had finally brought us to a very nice
personal conversation. That's when I started piecing together all of
the various overlapping vectors in our lives.

Back
in 1986, at the same time that I was first getting turned on to David
J's work, was when I was reading Watchmen for the first time.
I didn't know then that David J was friends with Alan Moore and that
they had worked together on various projects. I found out most of
this not too long after the fact, but still. David had written the
musical score for This Vicious Cabaret, a specific chapter of Moore's
V For Vendetta, which I had read at this point. He was in a
short-live band with Moore called the Sinister Ducks and recorded a
song called Old Gangsters Never Die which came with a comics
adaptation of the lyrics by Lloyd Thatcher (you can see it here
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/474540.html).
Since then he has contributed music and participated in Moore's
spoken word performances like The Birth Caul and Moon &
Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels among others.

1986
is when I first met Steve Bissette and John Totleben, the artists for
Moore's Swamp Thing series for DC Comics. For a couple of years I saw
Steve and John on a pretty regular basis and hung out with them
enough that they know and remember me years later. So even then I was
only one degree of separation from Alan Moore, which I knew, and
therefore two degrees from David J.

Around
this same time (the details of this are a bit fuzzier because I
wasn't directly involved) was when the Pixies were coming together as
part of the Boston indy music scene. Among several bands that were
part of that scene was a group called The Five who were originally
from Pittsburgh (The Pixies used to open for The Five). I didn't live
in Pittsburgh at the time, but I was coming here fairly regularly for
comics and record shopping. One of the comics shops I went to was a
place called BEM. Turns out, as I discovered many years later, the
proprietor Bill Boichel was friends with the guys in The Five. So I
was only three degrees from the Pixies.

In
1990 a couple of friends and I made a trip to Cleveland where we saw
The Jazz Butcher at a club called Peabody's Down Under. I met Pat
Fish, the Jazz Butcher himself (the only consistent member of the
band over their thirty year history), and I also randomly ran into my
friend Joelle who had been one of the people crammed in the back of
the van with three years earlier (Joelle now lives in New Zealand,
opening up a whole new country of potential connections). While there
I had Pat autograph the booklet that came with my CD copy of Scandal
in Bohemia/Sex and Travel. These were his second and third albums,
the ones David J played bass on. At the time this was a very rare
German import that I had manged to get my hands on, and for years the
only way these two albums were available. When I showed it to Pat his
response was something like, “Where the bloody hell did you get
this? I've barely seen these.”

A
few years later I'm writing for In Pittsburgh Magazine and get the
chance to do a phone interview with Frank Black/Black Francis of the
Pixies. It ends up being my first cover feature article. One of the
musicians opening for Frank at that Pittsburgh show is Reid Paley,
former lead singer of The Five. Through a lot of mutual Pittsburgh
friends I met and got to know Reid, as well as Five guitarist Tom
Moran. At the time Tom was in an Alt-Country band called TheDeliberate Strangers. I saw them a lot and one of my articles about them in No Depression ended up being my first in a nationally
published music mag. A couple of years later I met with Reid and some
other people for hanging out and drinks at a local bar called the
Squirrel Cage and Frank Black is there, just hanging out.

In
2000 the original members of the Jazz Butcher reunite for an American
tour and a new album and I met the whole band at the Millvale
Industrial Theater (as well as at some small bar in Erie whose name I
don't remember). While there I got signatures from drummer O.P. Jones
and guitarist Max Eider. Eider had also played guitar on David J's
1989 album Songs From Another Season.

I
have a friend, a remarkable poet, by the name of Margaret (check her
stuff out at http://margaretbashaar.wordpress.com/).
I met Margaret as one of my customers at Phantom of the Attic when
she was like twelve. Through her teen years we bonded over Elfquest
and now that she's an adult I'm happy to call her a genuine friend.
She is part of what for lack of a better term I'm going to call an
artist's community that gathers at the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber,
PA. The Hotel is home to a mixed group of artists, poets,
photographers, musicians, filmmakers, and pretty much anything thing
else creative you can think of. I have only been there once, to a
really amazing Halloween party. One evening, while having dinner with
Margaret the topic turned to music and I mentioned Bauhaus, or Love
and Rockets, or something, and Margaret casually mentioned that David
J hangs out there occasionally. She had met him one morning in the
kitchen of the Hotel while he was attempting to make tea.

Small
world.

Margaret
and several other denizens of the Midway were at the show on Sunday.

And
on Sunday night I completed my quest and got David J's signature on
the booklet.

Twenty-two years in the making!

I
could go on with these connections. One of Reid's albums was produced
by Eric Drew Feldman, former member of Captain Beefheart and regular
PJ Harvey collaborator. Reid and Frank Black just released a
collaborative album. The lines drawn between musicians seem to
connect that whole world, and if you end up knowing one of them your
world just gets a little smaller. The same is true of the world of
comic books, or of any one of a number of hobbies and professions.
When these things overlap it's even more true. What I find most
fascinating about all of this is backtracking the history. I was
listening to David J, the guy who wrote the prototypical Goth song
Bela Lugosi's Dead, and reading Alan Moore, the guy who wrote
Watchmen, both genre-changing, significant pieces of Pop
Culture history, at a time when they felt worlds away from my life.
Twenty-five plus years later I know they weren't a world away, just a
couple of steps.

And
not to overstate something that we've all known since the advent of
Kevin Bacon, that's true of everyone.

Anyway,
I just want to end this rambling post with a quote from a Love and
Rockets song called A Private Future. I've always thought this was
really good advice.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

This
morning on Facebook I saw a lot of posts about September 11, 2001. Of
course this is a date that everyone will remember and think about on
the anniversary. One of the posts was by my friend Terri. Her son
Matthew, who was a baby then, had a homework assignment to interview
someone who remembered 9/11. He interviewed his Mom. That resonated
with me, because I was at her house in Washington DC that morning.

We
all have our stories of that day. Where we were. What we did. How we
reacted. This is mine. I don't think I have any great revelations
here, or insights. But Terri's post reminded me we now have children
who don't remember, and those who were not born yet to whom this is just history and not memory. We should share those
stories, not just because we should never forget, but because they
help unite us in our humanity.

At
the time my friend Fred (whose name regular readers of the blog will
recognize as my collaborator of the Grey Legacy comics), was
living in an apartment in the house of our mutual friends Terri and
Peter in Capitol Hill, about three blocks from the Capitol building.
I had driven to DC from Pittsburgh to visit all of them and to see
the musician PJ Harvey at the 9:30 Club on the evening of 9/10. She
was on tour for her Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
album and played an amazing show. I think that's the night Fred and I
walked all the way back home in the middle of the night instead of
waiting for a cab.

I
had planned to leave early the next day. All of my friends had to go
to work, and my car was illegally parked and I wanted to escape the
city before getting a ticket. Peter had left for work and Terri had
taken Matthew to his daycare, then returned home to get ready for work herself. Fred and I were up, having breakfast and watching one of the
morning news shows. I don't remember which one, but at the end of the
hour they were planning on interviewing a British man who was the
world's foremost “Ugly Model.” I don't know why I remember that
detail, because we never got to see the interview.

Someone
broke into the show with garbled information about a plane having
crashed into the World Trade Center. Like everyone, we watched in
horror as the story unfolded. I can't remember the exact timing, but
Terri had seen the news and came down to Fred's apartment to make
sure we knew and were watching. We saw the second plane crash into
the tower live.

The
panic hadn't quite set in yet, and Terri decided to call off work and
go pick up Matthew at daycare. Fred decided to go with her, and they
have their own stories of traffic and confusion. I went to my car to
go home.

The
route I took out of DC took me past the Pentagon as I made my way to
the George Washington Parkway (not the way I usually went, but I
think I made an accidental detour). I was very conscious of the
low-flying planes coming and going from Ronald Reagan Airport and
Dulles. I made it to the Parkway and onto the Beltway and out of DC
with very little difficulty. The second tower was hit at 9:03. The
Pentagon was hit at 9:37. I drove past the Pentagon during that short
thirty-four minute window.

I
drove home. I took Route 68 through Maryland instead of the
Pennsylvania Turnpike because I had planned on going to my parents
house in Greene County, south of Pittsburgh. Very early in the trip I
started to get a migraine, something that happens to me periodically.
I'm sure the lack of sleep and stress of the morning contributed. I remember it being a really horrible trip. I
made the whole four-plus hour drive without hearing any news.
Somewhere along 68 I stopped at a convenience store to use the
restroom and buy some painkillers. The entire rest stop was in an
uproar. They were talking about blocking off the parking lot and
closing down and there was a general air of panic. I didn't catch all of it because my head was killing
me, so I did what I needed to do and left.

After
the fact I looked at some maps and saw that the rest stop was not
very far south of Shanksville, PA.

I
arrived at Mom and Dad's in the early afternoon. They weren't home. I
immediately turned on the TV and the very first image I saw was the
smoking Pentagon. That was really when the first real sense of the
enormity of the whole thing hit me. I had just been there. I had just
seen the Pentagon. When I heard when this happened I realized how
close I had been. That was when it really became real to me. In the
next few minutes I saw the film of the collapse of the Towers and
Terri's words came back to me. I spent the rest of that day trying,
futilely, to reach her and Fred (they were all right).

And
that's really it for my story. The rest was shock and mourning, like
everyone else. I didn't personally know anyone in the Towers or the
Pentagon, or on the planes. I know people who were there. I have a
cousin who was in New York. She had an appointment at the World Trade
Center later that day, but hadn't left her hotel yet. She was among
the people who walked out of town. One of my customers at Phantom of
the Attic was on the New York subway and didn't know anything was
going on at all until he came up onto the sidewalk in time to see the
dust cloud and a collapsing building.

I
think it's important to remember. I think it's also important not to
let this wound define us. That day, and in the days after, we were
united as a nation in our grief. That unity, one based on recognizing
our shared humanity, is what I think is most important to
remember. The victims of 9/11 were men and women, straight and gay,
conservative and liberal, Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist and all the
others. So were the first responders and heroes of that day. All of
these differences ceased to matter in the face of catastrophe and
death. No one stopped to ask religion or party affiliation. In those
terrible moments we were all human first, and the natural reaction to
other human beings who were suffering was to help.